


Silent *and* Mark Of Cain

by deslea



Category: The X files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-08
Updated: 2003-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex contemplates Forj Sidi Toui, Fort Marlene, and Marita, then gloves, hands, and deeper things. Requiem missing scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent *and* Mark Of Cain

  


**Silent**

She watches me in silence.

I know she wants...something. Some acknowledgement, some acceptance. The silence is not uncomfortable, but she wants more. Her wanting seeps through the delicate ice-aqua gleam touching her eyes as she lies there in the dark. It reflects off her skin in the cool glow of moonlight shining through the open window, falling over her face in a haze. She wants more, but equally, she does not ask; silenced partly by the weight of the years of bloodshed between us; and, more fundamentally, by my need for silence after a year of constant, droning noise.

God, the noise. For more than three hundred days, my head pounded with it; my senses swam with it. The rabble of the damned, drowning in their own noise and bringing it forth like an unholy fire. And when she came to me there, it seemed a hundred times worse. With fire in my head and blood in my ears, I willed her to leave me, though I knew she was my salvation. I even baited her, testing her, daring her to turn on her heels and walk away. Looking back on it now, now that the throb in my head has dulled to a slow ache, I recognise the insanity of it. The pragmatics of freedom aside, she could soothe me - and she was perhaps the only one who ever could. And I had nearly driven her away. Madness.

Still, she is here, and more importantly, she is silent. She was silent in Tunisia once the initial explanations were done. She was silent on the plane. And now, in our hotel, she is silent again. There are terrible things between us, terrible deeds and terrible omissions; but even in betrayal and mistrust, I can love her for her silence. 

I wonder what she's thinking. She knows I'm watching her; the vortex of her gaze intersects with mine as we behold each other in the dark. She is a beautiful woman, but I am long past caring about beauty. What holds my gaze is the way her arm drapes over the front of her body; the way her chaste little shirt hangs at an angle, tugging from her neck on one side, almost to her shoulder on the other. What makes her exquisite is not her looks, but the languid way she carries herself. It's good to see her like this, beautiful and serene; and if that brings me a short, sharp stab of guilt, I can let it go now in a way I couldn't before; because now she is well. We hurt each other, but if I can forgive myself, then I can forgive her, too. And these things can remain unsaid, because she is silent, and her silence is permission for me to be silent, too.

As she looks at me unblinkingly, watching me watching her, it occurs to me that breaking the silence could be what she needs. Once, I would have let the thought go; but now, I hold onto it and examine it in the dark. It's such a little thing, really; and it is something I can now afford to give. Maybe, just maybe I have finally found it in me to make room for what she needs. Because now, basking in the calm of her silence after so long in a hell of sound, I can finally see her for what she has always been - my refuge. I'm not so sure that's a good thing, even now; but a lot of my stubbornness got burned out of me in that place, so I'm willing to try it out.

I go to her.

I rise from the bed, throwing back the covers, bridging the distance between the twin beds in a couple of paces. I drop down on my knees beside her, and still she watches, eyelids flickering as she follows my course. She props herself up a little on her arm. I wonder what to say. Reaching out, I take a lock of her hair between my fingers, and I remember her in that place, hair shorter and coarser, eyes raw and dry. She remembers, too - I can see it in her eyes - but still she does not speak. I fumble for words, groping blindly for something to say, and only one thing comes.

"I'm glad you're here."

"Don't," she whispers. I begin to draw away, driving down the hurt that makes itself felt deep in my belly; but then she reaches out and touches her fingers to my lips, and amends, "Don't talk."

I draw closer once more, and it comes to me then that her silence is not only for me. Did she learn it in that place? Did she learn to fade into the background, silent and still and colourless, vanishing like mist whenever she could? My only answer is her mouth on me, her lips closing silently around mine with more gentleness than I remember. The moist sounds of mouths melding and the whispers of flesh meeting seem muted. Sometime during her ordeal, Marita learned tenderness. 

Maybe I did, too.

I find her hair, cool strands of silver beneath my fingers. I feel the faint rush of her breath on my cheek, rippling like a breeze as she breathes my name. The lines of her neck and shoulder are radiant in the moonlight, and, God! it makes me want to kiss her there...but I want to kiss her lips much, much more. Dimly, I am aware of her working my buttons, and of me unfastening hers; but they are automatic gestures. The truth, the purpose of what we do is in her eyes holding mine; in my mouth upon hers. 

I ease her back, and when I climb onto the bed, she is waiting, her arms drawing my body against hers. Once, she would have cried out my name; tonight, she cradles my head to her shoulder, her breathing deep and noiseless in the dark. The only hint of her need is in the rise and fall of her breast beneath my palm; in the way her body slides fluidly along mine. Did you learn this in that place, too, Marita? Did you learn to bring yourself release without betraying a sound, keeping that one last shred of dignity for yourself? And when we join, will you still stay silent even then?

She does.

When she draws me into her, there is no sound, only her deepened breaths and her face pressed to my neck; and suddenly, fervently I wish I had both hands so I could cradle her head there against me while I fill her. It is an old grief, but it washes over me with stunning force, until she kisses me there and makes it all fade away. Moving within her, so slowly, I feel the dull ache of loss disperse, drawn out and whittled away with every stroke. Melding with her softness is like a cool hand on a fevered brow, soothing and kind. I wonder whether this is what they mean when they talk about making love. I wonder whether this is new, or whether it was always like this for us, but there was too much noise for us to see it. 

She slides her hands over my face, as though memorising the lines of it in the dark. Then she draws my face to hers, and she kisses me there, first one eyelid, then the other. Grief crashes over me - grief for what, I couldn't have said - and then is chased away just as quickly. And when I fill her, still there is no sound; but she holds me tight, and her warm breath is erratic on my flesh as she breathes my name in a noiseless invocation.

She doesn't speak when we part, nor when I lay my head over her heart. She doesn't speak when I kiss the skin in the cleft between her breasts, but she crosses her arms over me, possessive and fierce, and her palm cradles my jaw with the tenderness of a parent.

She doesn't speak when I ease her onto her side and curl my body over hers. She doesn't speak when I entwine my fingers protectively over her hand, or when she squeezes me with hers. But I know that she loves me.

I know because she is silent.

* * *

  


**Mark Of Cain**

_\-- And the Lord said, "What have you done? Listen - your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground; and now you shall be driven from the ground." Cain said to the Lord, "Today you have driven me away from the land; I shall be exiled from your presence. I shall be a wanderer, and anyone who comes upon me will kill me." And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no-one who came upon him would kill him. -- from Genesis 4:8-16._

 

She hands me my glove in silence.

Did she know I would want it, I wonder? She bought clothes before she came for me, and she says it was just to save time; but the clothes she bought are the sorts of clothes I used to wear, back when we were normal people with normal lives. I don't know whether her point is that we can still be those people, or the reverse; but I know that she has one. 

Nothing else she bought was random - logically, therefore, the glove is not random either. I don't ask what happened to the right-hand one; it is needless in the temperate conditions. That leaves only one, a single scrap of leather, crafted not for my hand, but for the hand that is not.

But how did she know I would want it?

Watching her, holding it out expectantly, I tick over the times I have worn one. You could count them on one hand; and that thought strikes me as darkly funny. She looks at me quizzically, and I realise the corners of my mouth have turned up a little. So I take it from her, running my fingers over the cool fabric. It's soft leather, and that seems even funnier - don't want to scratch that fibreglass hand, now, do we?

I wore one when I punched Mulder out, the night she was infect- 

no, I won't think about that. 

the night I forged my alliance with the Englishman. I remember pulling it on, another black leather glove much like this one, and thinking that I'd delay the moment of truth until I had him down on the floor. Shame him with it. Why not? It was better than his pity, or - worse - grim self-righteousness. I wore one with Skinner, too, now that I think of it - once in the car park of the Hoover building, and then the handful of times I was at his office. There's that word again, hand. Any minute now, I'm going to start laughing, and she's going to think I'm laughing at her. I don't want to do that to her.

But all those times, I was on my own.

That thought brings me up short, and my humour drains away in an instant. Marita wasn't with me then - she was at Fort Marlene, padding around in a cotton gown and paper slippers, slipping from room to room like a tormented ghost. So how did she know?

I shoot her a curious look, and I see that she's waiting, so I start to put on the glove. It's an awkward task, even with the zip in the side. I know that she wants to help; yet she won't offer, because she knows that would irritate me. So she just watches me, a troubled look flitting over her delicate features. It occurs to me that I can afford to let her help me; that it costs me nothing and that it binds her to me - and whatever else has passed between us, I need her with me now. 

I'm reluctant to break the silence, but I nod my head a little, catching her attention. I hold out the hand that is not, flexing the muscles in my stump to straighten the fingers. With my good hand, I hold out the glove; a single, stupid gesture not at all deserving of its implied importance. A flicker of her eyelids betrays her surprise; but she merely nods, running her fingers over the cool leather absently as she takes it from me.

She's gentle, as though the thing were my hand, and not a lump of fibreglass over metal and myoelectric cables. As she does it, I look down at it, wretched thing that it is, and it occurs to me that I never felt a need to hide it in Kazakhstan. It was a battle scar there. Something to bear with bittersweet pride. The Russians even gave me a medal for it, which I promptly lost track of. She probably has that, along with all the other souvenirs she thinks I don't know about. 

So why hide it now? 

She raises her head sharply, and I realise I've spoken the thought out loud. I expect a shrug or a dry retort, but she surprises me all over again with the ways in which she has changed. She rests her hand on my shoulder, the bad one, and slides it down to where my arm ends and my prosthetic begins. Through the thin fabric of my shirt, I can feel her tracing the join, looking at it pensively; and once I would have asked her to stop, but now I just wait, because I genuinely want to hear what she has to say.

"I won't have them looking at you that way," she whispers at last. I stare at her, only half-comprehending. She shifts a little under my scrutiny. "They look at you, and they look at this, and they see something you deserved. They see you branded with your own treachery, like a mark of Cain. They don't see what I see." Her gaze is averted, and her cheeks are flushed, like she's just admitted her most shameful secret. She insists, "I won't have them looking at you like that."

Once again I have misunderstood her. Last night, I thought she was silent for me, when she was silent for herself. This morning, I thought she had anticipated my need to hide this from our opposite numbers, when really it was something she needed herself. But does that really change things? Does the selfishness of her need to protect me mean that she loves me less - or more? Who the hell knows?

Does it even matter?

I watch her, at a loss for words. With her clumsy metaphor, she has stumbled onto something that strikes a thousand chords. As I dig through my memories, my rusty Sunday-school brain produces a mental picture. The mark of Cain wasn't really the brand of the wrongdoer, so much as the brand of the exile, wasn't it? Is that me? Exiled from my place in the human family by the compromises I have made? I used to think so. Now, I'm not so sure. 

She begins to draw away, looking a little ashamed of her outburst; but I catch her hand and draw her back. "Do you look at me like that, Marita?" I demand, softly, without rancour.

Tears spring to her eyes faster than she can hide them, and she blinks them back. "Sometimes," she admits, and after all that's happened, I can't really blame her. "But most times I see you wounded," she goes on, voice husky, fixing her gaze on my arm once more. I don't think my arm is what she means. That should bother me, but it doesn't. Not from her.

"Then I don't care what they see," I tell her. That's a lie, and she knows it, because I leave the glove where it is; but in another way, a more important way, it is absolutely true. She looks up at me once more, a watery smile lighting on her lips; and when I reach for her hand, she is there, as she has always been there. If I am the branded one, the displaced one, then it is she who brings me back into the fold.

"Are we going to go and do what we have to do?" she asks me at last.

I raise her hand to my mouth and kiss her there, palm and back. "Yes. Yes, we are." I tug on it, drawing her against me, and slide my hand into her hair, teasing it free of pins. She looks up at me with an indulgent smile. Dipping my head to kiss her, I murmur against her, "Soon."

Maybe there is life after exile. Maybe not.

Either way, I mean to find out.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Of all my Krycek/Marita work, I think this is probably the least likely portrayal I've done. I don't really think either of them could have let go of their betrayals quite as smoothly as this (and even in this universe, I think they're more temporarily set aside than strictly resolved). What I do think, though, is that both came to Requiem as radically changed people after their respective ordeals. There was a marked difference between Alex and Marita in Tunisia and in Washington DC - in Washington, they seemed very in tune with one another. They talked in turn, feeding off one another's thoughts. They were also both softly spoken - in Alex's case, unusually so, even when arguing with CSM. Clearly, something happened in between - something that calmed both of them, eased their hostilities, and enabled them to move forward. These vignettes were an attempt to pull all those threads together.


End file.
